One Small Victory

February 26, 2018

I feel like the last post was a pretty big milestone for me, although seemingly insignificant.

In the past, when Betsy starts talking one of two things will happen. Either I will think, “NO, not going to happen”, and that’s the end of it. OR, I will think, “NO, that’s not going to happen”, but that’s not the end. Betsy keeps putting thoughts of drinking into my head and each time, my sane mind starts to find the thought of drinking more and more appealing. With that, Betsy gets louder and louder until my sane mind says, “FFFF it! I want to drink so I’m going to gosh darn it– and nobody or nothing is going to stop me!”

I totally thought the latter was going to happen last Saturday. Betsy kept talking and my sane mind was starting to listen and get persuaded.

Instead of isolating like my norm, I reached out. I’m in a group chat of sober pals and by reaching out they periodically checked in on me, which I knew they’d do and I really didn’t want to disappoint them by drinking.

I consciously thought and listed out all of the reasons why I didn’t want to drink. This helped tremendously. By the time I was done, I was about 80% confident that I had defeated Betsy. Not 100% because #1 the party store is 3 minutes away and my sane mind can change in a heartbeat and #2 I still needed to go to the grocery store and wasn’t sure if I would be tempted there and jump ship with Betsy.

It turned out to be a great night– SANS the poison! It was just me and my youngest for most of the night. We had a nice dinner out, got the grocery shopping done, cleaned up and then watched Because of Winn Dixie (which was such a great movie to watch together). We may have indulged a little on Klondike bars and popcorn with m&m’s 🙂

I was proud to be 100% coherent when hubby and the oldest got home around 10:30. And I really felt that this was a big step. Betsy persisted and I used tools to SHUT HER UP. I will be putting those tools in my back pocket for next time!

It’s now Monday night, the top of Day 5. No real cravings or urges yesterday and today. Tomorrow I have a union meeting after work that lasts for like 3 hours. I may need to pull out those tools! I’m really looking forward to getting back to double digits. Other than that, I’m not looking too far ahead, basically taking it one day at a time.

Feeling pretty good mentally and physically. My sinus infection is much better and the weather is getting nicer, I’ve been getting in some walks and sunshine– all good things for my soul.

Text Widget

This is a text widget, which allows you to add text or HTML to your sidebar. You can use them to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Edit them in the Widget section of the Customizer.